43 Comments

Trump is just mind boggling to me, as well as the people surrounding him. The utter lack of decency any if these people possess is what scares me most of all. When I talked to voters and did everything I could to get out the vote for HARRIS, I said that this was an election between kindness and meanness, curiosity and open mindedness vs ignorance and superstition. We already see who, and what, won.

Expand full comment

A real Eye Opener this morning ☕ Thom, there's so much Disinformation regarding COVID yet to this day?! If we are hit with another variant of this deadly virus,no way would we be prepared. Hopefully all the research,under the Biden administration, will pull us threw for the time being, but If Project 2025 is put in play,all bets are off. I'll be stocking up on masks and hand sanitizer just to be on the safe side. Great article, and will reStack ASAP 🙏💯👍

Expand full comment

I still have a few boxes of masks. I got vaccinated and got all my boosters (as well as the Shingrix, RSV, pneumococcal, etc.).

But my nephew, an educated dentist (also a Republican) and his uneducated wife and son did NOT get vaccinated. She now has Covid, my nephew has diarrhea & his son is sick.

Expand full comment

I was in EMS when AIDS came on the scene. There was so much we did not know and we took every precaution we could. Thank goodness, science prevailed and it is no longer the death sentence it once was and victims are no longer treated with disgust and fear. I was horrified at the reaction to the Covid virus and lost all trust in our leader(s) to handle any crisis. Far too many people died who did not have to and millions are compromised for the rest of their lives.. What should have been a medical/scientific concern quickly became a political talking point. I fear that pandemic will be nothing compared to what we are facing in the near future.

Expand full comment

Of course, the Trump administration will be even less prepared for a pandemic than last time with a leadership full of science-denying antivaxxer worm-brained idiots who perhaps think epidemics are caused by space lasers or something. His AG should be well into prosecuting one of the worlds leading authorities on infectious disease (Fauci), and the DOGE Boys will have halved NIH's research budget by then - so forget about a fast vaccination like last time.

Expand full comment

D. Trump's only talent is BS. You cannot BS a virus.

COVID, or rather his "management" of it, defeated him in 2020.

Yes, mother nature will deliver us from this plague with a plague of her own. I am only concerned that she will take down a lot more than DT and his MAGA wave with her wrath.

D.

Expand full comment

I heard some months ago that the Finnish were getting bird flu shots. It sounds like those might not be effective for whatever is really coming?

And .....whenever I think Trump is bad, Jared K. tops him in lack of decency and in lacking any kind of moral standard to live by.

Expand full comment

In UK, people over 60 years old (maybe 65 mot sure) can get covid and flu vaccines free of charge on NHS. Thank you!

Expand full comment

People voted this lunatic back to the White House because they "were better off four years ago", and I wonder how more than half the nation got afflicted with memory loss. There was incompetence, as well as willfull neglect, when 45's team ignored the solid and effective response guidance prepared by the outgoing Obama administration.

I vote to follow Thom's advice to stock up on supplies, both for preparedness and arbitrage if another round of tariffs and trade wars snarls supply chains and hikes prices. Get your flu and COVID shots too before one of his clown car passengers takes over the FDA.

Expand full comment

Except for the few elderly in Seattle at the onset, COVID 19 did us a favor by culling the population of the pig headed, hateful believers

RFK said he wouldn't thwart the development of vaccines, just not make them mandatory.

Tomorrow I go in for my 8th COVID booster and next month for the latest flu.shot

I live in the country and only go to town to buy groceries,pick up mail and packages and to the Medical center. So I feel pretty safe.

Expand full comment

Funny thing about great minds for just a few days ago it dawned on me that this was the first general election since the Covid pandemic. It seems, at least to me, it was a hundred years ago. The damage that was done to the society is incalculable in terms of long range effects. Rites of passage, from visiting newborn members of a family, to proms, to funerals were thwarted. People were unable to say goodbye to loved ones. Graduations were cancelled. Very, very devastating in ways I often wonder if the rest of the populace realizes.

Throw in two presidential impeachments, in which the target/president was acquitted, and impeachment of the head of "Homeland Security," (three impeachments in less than 100 months), "rigged" elections (claimed by both parties of the political duopoly) January 6th, so-called "Black Lives Matter" and its impact (or lack thereof), Black People eating house pets, multiple presidential candidate assassination "attempts," the ONLY former president to become president again since Grover Cleveland and the nation has been battered in historical ways.

In boxing, one learns to "kill the body, and the head will die." The jab is the weapon; you keep throwing it and body shots until your opponent is distracted and flustered...then you lower the boom to the head (the right hand/power shot). Chances are, he will meet the canvas.

Another pandemic is quite a possibility. However, as the next 24 months pass, we will soon learn that a pandemic is the very least of problems to contend with. The stage will be dominated by global events that most of us cannot fathom. Just as we could not fathom Covid and its consequences.

The right hand is coming.

Expand full comment

Your analogy may be too true. I was thinking that if I was Putin my timing would be invade Poland the Baltics the day Trump is inaugurated. He wouldn't have a clue what to do.

Expand full comment

Can't look outwards...

Until you think N-Words.

Expand full comment

https://wapo.st/3AVZj6p

The above link is to a WAPO article telling about bird flu being found in raw milk.

So the next pandemic could be a glass or two away!

Expand full comment

Probably unlikely as few people drink raw milk unless they have a dead worm in their brain.

Expand full comment

You're a lighthouse, Thom. Thank you.

Expand full comment

Add this to the grinding effects of climate change on the economy and you have a very toxic mix for economic well being.

Expand full comment

Could another pandemic spare us somehow from dictatorship? Which would be worse, losing millions to a pandemic, several of which might be top government leaders, or dictatorship? I'd say it might be a toss-up.

Expand full comment

I remember Trump telling the media that he thought people who wore masks did not like him. Probably one of the few statement he made that was true. Now he wants RFK, Jr. to lead health efforts of the US. This was all foreseeable during the election process and America still elected him.

Expand full comment

Kennedy is unaware we’re dealing with zoonoses, diseases that originate with animals that are also contagious to humans. I’ll keep getting my Covid and flu shots. Trump was unaware his own grandfather, Friedrich (Frederick) Trump died from the 1918 flu epidemic.

Expand full comment

Let's hope the the Governors of the still-sane states are working together to deal with a now dangerously corrupt Federal Government.

Expand full comment

As we get out of the 5 year cycle of this round at the start of 2025 it would be ironic to begin another round at this time. I hope we do not have another cycle of masking. I would really like to see a movie at the big screen and be mask free again.

Expand full comment

Never think that things can’t get worse.

Expand full comment

I get the impression we are going to be inundated with a wave of ignorance, lies and bs, probably because the kakistocracy that is coming into office operates on these bad ideas.

Expand full comment

You are so correct.

Expand full comment